In Both Sides Now, author and ethicist Leslie Cannold presents two sides of an argument and then it’s over to you: what do you think is true, and what do you think Cannold really believes?
Today she asks: as the yearly debate around Australia Day flares up in the press and on social media, do traditional ideas about free speech and censorship still make sense?
Yes case: free speech should be enforced everywhere, it’s the lifeblood of society. No case: hate speech creates hates — and besides, it’s high time privileged white males were called to account.
Yes
Former US Supreme Court justice William O Douglas coined the metaphor that has dominated public policy in Western democracies like Australia for centuries: “Publishers … bid for the minds of men in the marketplace of ideas.”
The concept is that citizens in a democracy have the freedom to speak their minds without fear or favour and the obligation to defend the right of others to do the same, even when those ideas are abhorrent. “I disapprove of what you say,” wrote Voltaire’s biographer, summarising the Enlightenment thinker’s view on the matter, “but I will defend to the death your right to say it.”
Even where speech is ripe with falsehood and fallacies, the right remedy in all but the most urgent cases is not suppression but education. “The remedy to be applied is more speech,” wrote US Supreme Court justice Louis Brandeis in 1927, “not enforced silence.”
All well and good in the analogue era when access to an audience was restricted by those who knew the rules and enforced them, and when editors wouldn’t publish speech they deemed contravened the accepted limits on free expression.
Many also took the opportunity to abuse their power by denying access to perfectly lawful speech they wanted to deny oxygen.
But there’s no denying such oversight kept a lid on lies and slurs and, as society’s views evolved, more overt expressions of sexism, racism, homophobia and other unjust prejudices.
Now, on the internet, anything goes. Want to organise a coup? Recruit members for a new chapter of the Klan? Deny the Holocaust? The freedom to say whatever you want about whoever you want is virtually unlimited and doing great harm.
It’s also led to serious and unintended consequences, in particular the policing of speech by trolls and virtual mobs. They roam cyberspace like a vigilante army, making it their business to shout others down. Not just those whose speech is unlawful but anyone — journalist, writer, academic or activist — who expresses opinions or even discusses topics that make them antsy. When the swarm passes through, self-censorship and insincere apologies are left in its wake.
Can anyone think this is good for democracy?
The marketplace of information and ideas is the lifeblood of open societies. Yes, time-honoured limits on free speech must be enforced on every platform, including the net. But we cannot allow self-appointed moral guardians, however just their cause, to tell us what we can and cannot say in the 21st century’s public square.
No
Let’s cut the crap. There has never been a free marketplace of ideas for anyone but men — the same pale and stale men moaning about intolerance now.
Being called out for what you write, promote or say in public isn’t censorship. It’s accountability — long overdue accountability from those who have been ignored, silenced, stigmatised and insulted for so long.
If the politicians we elect won’t require it and the platforms that exploit us don’t provide it, who can blame us for pursuing justice on our own?
Whoever said “names will never hurt me” was an idiot. Hate speech hurts. It triggers and it retraumatises. Over time it can succeed in dehumanising some people in the eyes of others — as the Nazis did by repeated reference to Jews as vermin.
Only the US government, and old-fashioned liberals and libertarians, still cling to the myth that existing limits on speech are enough. In contrast, the United Nations and European Union draw a direct link between hate speech and atrocities such as genocide. They call for “a new generation of digital citizens” to be “empowered to recognise, reject and stand up to hate speech”.
We are those citizens. Far from trolling or bullying, we form immediate and informal alliances online to call out dangerous and hurtful words wherever we find them. Of course we focus most of our attention on high profile purveyors of hate. Their words matter most in stirring up what the UN calls alarming trends online of “growing xenophobia, racism and intolerance, violent misogyny, anti-Semitism and anti-Muslim hatred around the world”.
To suggest we’re bullies is as clueless and insensitive as privileging your right to say whatever you want over our need for acceptance, inclusion and safety.
Instead, 21st century citizens are obliged to advocate for internet regulation that makes everyone feel safe online and to avoid purveying lies, misinformation and hate speech themselves.
This won’t make the marketplace of ideas less crowded. Instead it will make it more inclusive as a new crop of diverse users feel safe to finally add their voice.
Which side do you think Cannold sits on? And what do you believe? Send your thoughts to letters@crikey.com.au with Both Sides Now in the subject line.
This is 2 no arguments.
It is also now not simply a question about whether you have an inalienable right to post on the big platforms, but action was taken to destroy any place the people you don’t like can post with each other.
Additionally, this has been framed as a need to remove the ability to organise over the internet if the government doesn’t like it. The targets are quite odious, but that is what it amounts to. Even in the yes argument you conflate it into one problem.
I have seen many moral arguments against equating the Capitol riots with the riots after Floyd’s death. But has anyone thought about how legislation will view it?
The debate over places like Twitter and FB lacks imagination. An orderly public square is no where else policed by guards listening to everything, yet on the internet this is the extent of it. Sure, you get the occasional user empowering feature like user defined filtering, blocking, etc. But half the time it doesn’t work because the people you are trying to not encounter are determined to harrass you.
IRL you have lots of potential forms of recourse before having to get cops involved. Some of us more than others, but the options are usually stronger than things that are easily routed around like your typical block function.
I love being rude online but I can’t disagree with the notion that everyone should be able to have a good time on the net free from unwanted abuse. How do we get there?
No.
Freedom of speech means people have the right to say things I disagree with, or even feel abhorrent.
Freedom of speech is a right people have died for. For example, members of the London Corresponding Society were hanged in 1794 for the crime of sharing letters on the subject of democracy. Some of our most distinguished early non-voluntary settlers were transported for the crime of speaking the wrong things.
In 1916, Tom (Snowy) Barker was sentenced to six month prison for publishing a poster which read…
To Arms
Capitalists, Parsons, Politicians,
Landlords, Newspaper Editors and
other Stay-At-Home Patriots
————————————-
YOUR COUNTRY NEEDS
YOU
IN THE TRENCHES
————————————–
WORKERS
Follow your masters
Around the same time, in a paroxysm of Empire loyalty, we shut down Lutheran Sunday Schools because they were conducted in German. So much for freedom of speech. Ask an Aboriginal person how speaking language was treated at the mission.
Is it really any better today? Perhaps the Prisoner of Belmarsh might wish to share an opinion, or Chelsea Manning, or John Kyriakou, or closer to home, David McBride, or Witness X.
I’m all for freedom of speech.
How do you feel about calling out “FIRE!” In a crowded building? That is a legitimate comparison with some of the material circulating.
I feel about that no better than calling out “Weapons of mass destruction” in a crowded polity. The difference is, of course, that were I to be found guilty of calling out “Fire” in crowded building, I would be sent to prison. On the other hand, if I called out “Weapons of mass destruction” I would probably be promoted and later get an AO.
Its like this BB. One has the right to shout “FIRE” in the circumstances that you describe but they are also responsible (that word) for the consequences (foreseen or unforeseen) of the act.
The problem is that those words, ‘responsible’ & ‘consequences’, are not acceptable in wokedom.
I can think of several others, ‘duty’, ‘obligation’, ‘consideration’ but they are equally shocking to the modern “mind”.
I think you may have misunderstood worked on, Agni. It is all about responsibility for speech.
All freedoms come with responsibilities. They travel together, always have. We’ve always felt free to impose restrictions on ‘freedoms’ to prevent anarchy, and speech is no different. If, as the old example goes, I walk into a dark and crowded theatre and cry ‘fire! run!’, I stand to be charged with an offence relevant to public disturbance, and if folks are injured or die through my careless act, with causing bodily injury or manslaughter at the very least. The public place we now know as the internet should be no different, even though many enter it in disguise.
Leslie, for those acquainted with the (so called) Classics (or Greats) the question does not exist.
I recommended to someone recently the discussion (on MP3) between Clive James and Peter Porter : subject “Not Having a Classical Education”. A correspondent was possessed of the magnanimity to offer a link to the the MP3 only a few days ago.
If you 2nd sentence for “NO” was correct there would never have been any (deemed) prominent females. The book (one of hundreds) “Silent Spring” was, one could easily argue, the “gong” for the phenomenon of climate change. The remainder of the article is either trite or too silly to pursue. As a tip for future reference, investigate the history of APANET and the characteristics of Serotonin. The combo of the two topics will yield something of an answer.
ha ha. Just occurred to me as I was about to click “post”:
the intention is NOT edification (is it?) but but a Guardian-like dumbed-down (happy-clappy) “solution” to an ever-increasing contemporary problem for which the participants do not possess the education to address.
Freedom of speech has never been absolute. In Australia, it’s actually a very limited right to freedom of political speech. Sending people rape and murder threats does not enhance the market place of ideas, quite the opposite. Calling people racist, sexist, homophobic etc names isn’t contributing to the marketplace of ideas. Given that a former Facebook moderator is suing for PTSD caused by the deluge of images he had to shift through, I think we really should consider what is, and is not, acceptable online and what impact it is having on moderators. An unlimited right to freedom of speech would protect livestreaming of Christchurch mosque massacre.
Perhaps closer than you imagine “Calling people racist, sexist, homophobic etc names isn’t contributing to the marketplace of ideas” but it will, sans evidence, result in the accursed being banned from Creaky.
That is the function of the ModBot – not a libel prophylactic.
Sans evidence? The words themselves are evidence. Sure, bots get it wrong some times but there are some things that a clear. If a person can’t make a point without is being based on someone’s race, sexuality, sex etc the issue isn’t being locked out of a marketplace of ideas, it’s that one doesn’t actually have an idea.
To paraphrase Hitch, “that which can be thought without basis, may be pontificated without requiring acknowledgment“.
Strictly : what is (or has been) introduced without evidence may be dismissed without evidence.
A point I have made often, SC.
To be candid, your last paragraph equates will state censorship of Joyce and Lawrence etc. of days gone by. A glance at the editorials and letters from the day concur with the government of the day. Yet Stalin had a similar policy that extended across the society.
A few remarks concerning the Papal Index are germane from printing interpretations of the Bible to the early 20th century. Suffice to observe that when officialism forbids books and videos the place has got a problem.